How to come up with an idea

If you have a market in mind, talk to people in that space to better understand their experiences and challenges. Look for a pain that is so bad that customers will try almost anything to solve it.

For example, Christina Cacioppo, CEO of Vanta, discovered that SOC2 - the way a company ...

There's no single right way to get started or build a business. Timing, luck, and grit often play an outsize role.

However, we can learn from how the best entrepreneurs went about building their companies.

• Asking the wrong questions. Ask people about their past and current actions and problems, not to predict their future behaviour.
• Settling for a "nice to have" reaction from early customer discovery. Instead, search for a big problem and solution.

• Don’t rush into just starting a company—wait for the right thing to hit you personally, emotionally, and logically.
• If it feels like you’re pulling teeth to find the pain point, you haven’t found a problem worth solving.
• Be sure to validate the pain points for each persona yo...

First build a MVP (minimum viable product) to test with potential customers and validate that people want the product.

For Christina at Vantra, she knew they were onto something when people proactively reached out to ask about what she was building.

When you're at the idea stage, it's easy to throw ideas around and poke holes in them. Don't do this. All ideas are flawed, you're limited by what you know, and it's hard to get honest feedback when you're talking through hypotheticals.

Instead, get out into the market, have conversations, ...